Notable outcomes were the significant drop in support for the Labour
Party, the United Kingdom
Independence Party (UKIP) finishing second in a major election
for the first time in its history, and the election of two British National Party (BNP)
candidates. It was the first time the Scottish National Party won the
largest share of the European election vote in Scotland,[1] and it
was the first time since 1918 Labour had failed to come first in a
Welsh election.[2] It was
the DUP's worst ever European
election result: the party had previously topped the poll in every
European election in Northern Ireland since the first
one in 1979.[3]

Contents

Results

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Great Britain - overall
result

Source: BBC News As the total
number of UK seats went down compared to the 2004 election, the
number of seats won in the 2004 elections is recalculated as it
were in 2009 elections. Both figures are included in the table
below, with the relative seat changes figures taking into account
the changes
in seat numbers per region.

Turnout across Great Britain was 15,136,932, representing
34% of the electorate

Constituencies and
representation

As has been the case since 1999, the electoral constituencies
were based on the government's nine English regions, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, creating a total of 12 constituencies. On
31 July 2007, in line with the required reduction in representation
from the United Kingdom, the Electoral Commission recommended
reductions in representation from Scotland, and from 5 English
regions, resulting in new representation as below:

1 Includes Gibraltar,
the only British
overseas territory which is part of the European Union.2 Had the Treaty of Lisbon come into force prior
to these elections, the UK would have been entitled to a 73rd MEP.
Were the Electoral Commission to perform a reallocation in keeping
with the same procedures they used to allocate 72 MEPs, the extra
MEP would have been allocated to the West Midlands
constituency,[6]
preserving its representation at 7 rather than reducing it to
6.

Opinion
polls

In the run up to the election, several polling organisations
carried out public opinion
polling in regards to voting intentions in Great Britain (ie.
the UK excluding Northern Ireland, which is always excluded from
such voting intention surveys). Results of such polls are displayed
below.

Notable results include the UK Independence Party coming second in a national election for the first time in it's hstory and the far-right British National Party gained it's first ever representation in an elected parliament.